Both the State and Apple, which employs 5,500 people here, have appealed to the ECJ.

However, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Leo Varadkar said it will take the money from Apple in the meantime and put it in an escrow account pending the outcome of the appeal.

He said: “We will collect it. What we had to do in order to collect it was set up an escrow account.

“That’s been established now and we anticipate collecting money in Q2 this year, so we will collect the money, but we are absolutely disputing the case.

He rejected any suggestion that the Government would wait until the court case concluded before collecting the money.

“The court case will take many years and we will be collecting the money.”

The Taoiseach said the case had damaged Ireland’s reputation internationally.

He added: “It hasn’t been helpful. Ireland is a country that has a very clear tax policy, we’ve had it for a very long time now, the corporate tax rate is 12.5 per cent, it’s not going up, it’s not going down, and unlike quite a lot of other countries there are very few get out clauses, exceptions or credits.

“Other countries have a higher tax rate on paper, but actually they collect less, and the OECD figures prove that.

“We’re really one of the most transparent countries when it comes to tax.”
Meanwhile, Varadkar also suggested the UK could get its own specially-designed Brexit trade agreement with the EU which would make it like “Norway Plus”.

He said the UK might have a similar arrangement with the EU as Norway, which has almost full access to the single market, but has to abide by all EU rules and pay into the Union budget.

Brexiteers have long insisted they will not contribute financially to the EU once they leave.

Varadkar said: “It’s difficult to speculate.

“It’ll be a new agreement between the UK and the EU. Britain is a big place.

“It is 60m people, compared to Norway which is a relatively small country like Ireland, or a country like Canada, which is on a different continent.

“It will be a specific agreement for the UK, but of course as Ireland we want that to be as close as possible, so we would have it as ‘Norway Plus’ but I think we need to get into the detail now as to what that means. It’s been some time now since the referendum happened.